Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

Fifteen
At about four in the afternoon we reach the Mojave
Desert, in the southeast corner of California. We don’t
want to go to Las Vegas, which is quite near, and crossing
the desert right now, a trip of about eighty miles through
abandoned and hot territory, doesn’t seem like a good idea
to us. So we start looking for a place to sleep along Route
66, here repeatedly intersecting Interstate 40 and finally
turning off to the desert, as we do. After leaving the interstate
we drive for at least half an hour through deserted,
bare countryside looking for Goffs, the only place
in the next fourty miles that is mentioned in the Lonely
Planet. Why that is we don’t understand, because when
the narrow asphalt road finally makes a tight curve we
stand in front of a wooden sign swinging on a rusty iron
pole. ‘Goffs’, it says. ‘State of California. Number of inhabitants:
23’. Those 23 live in a total of four houses and one
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